Bella Bella, British Columbia
unincorporated community and Indian Reserve community
Bella Bella, also known as Waglisla, is the capital of the Heiltsuk and is an unincorporated community and Indian reserve community located within Bella Bella Indian Reserve No. 1 on the east coast of Campbell Island in the Central Coast region of British Columbia, Canada. Bella Bella is located 98 nautical miles (181 km) north of Port Hardy, on Vancouver Island, and 78 nautical miles (144 km) west of Bella Coola. The community is on Lama Passage, part of the Inside Passage – a transportation route linking the area, and northern British Columbia as well as Alaska for marine vessels carrying cargo, passengers and recreational boaters from the south coast. The settlement "forms a national capital of sorts" to the Heiltsuk.
Founded between 1897 and 1903, Bella Bella is located on Campbell Island.
Originally styled New Bella Bella to distinguish it from "Bella Bella", the community's official post office name for some time was Waglisla, meaning "river on the beach" in the Heiltsuk language. Old Bella Bella is the Heiltsuk village site located south of the current village that was known as Bella Bella. As it grew, a post office was located in the store. When the Heiltsuk relocated their settlement to the north, the post office, and the name Bella Bella, moved – first to the store in the BC Packers Cannery, then to the village of Shearwater.
“Bella Bella, British Columbia” enters the record as unincorporated community and Indian Reserve community. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bella, British and Columbia can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2894612. Authority coordinates are 52.162, -128.145. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897 and 1903.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bella Bella, British Columbia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.